A new cat from Apple every year?

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is coming soon. Sure, Mac fans are all excited, imagine all the eye candy and new functions...... in 3D! And the price is only $129, all functions fully loaded! Compare that to "the other major new OS" whose Ultimate version os about $250!

OK, yeah , it's cool, feels like the OS of the future. But wait, my version of OS X, 10.4 / Tiger still works well, and I really don't have that much dough to spend. So initially, I am planing to wait for half a year, by then I might have the money, and most of the software will have their kinks cleaned up to work nicely with the new OS. Well, that's my original plan, until I saw Steve Jobs' own words on the New York Times:

“I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it’s given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve.”

As Apple Gains PC Market Share, Jobs Talks of a Decade of Upgrades
By John Markoff, Oct 22, 2007, New York Times

Okay, so if I buy Leopard half a year later, then I would be looking at software that would be obsolete within 6 to 12 months, wouldn't that be nice?

Really, if that's the case, then why not skip this release and save up one version's upgrade fee altogether? It's not like Tiger is all outdated and stuff, the most important function of nextgen OSs: system wide search, which just came out on Vista, is already in Tiger.

Releasing new releases too fast is like shooting them selves in the foot. Consumers feel like the manufacturer is mocking them with each new release, feeling buyer's remorse right after they made the purchase. Since I don't have money to burn, I might as well save up and avoid buyer's remorse altogether, and just wait for whatever big cat the next version of Mac OS would be.